Oracle team to drown sorrows at Flugtag

That’s what Oracle Team USA is doing with the shards of the $8 million racing catamaran AC72 that toppled in San Francisco Bay and was swept out to sea last month.

The ragtag group of sailors and crew members are building a tiny model of their wrecked sailboat to participate in Saturday’s Red Bull Flugtag in San Francisco, a silly event in which 33 teams will compete to see how far they can launch eclectic flying devices into the water from a 30-foot-tall platform.

The Flugtag – German for flight day – generally draws teams of goofballs and super nerds intent on gliding over McCovey Cove for a split second longer than their rivals. The Flugtag, which is staged at venues around the world, is often shown in Red Bull television commercials.

Some teams compete to set the world record.

Most just to make a scene.

And Oracle’s shrunken catamaran sailboat named the “Spirit of 17” isn’t exactly designed to fly.

“We’re gonna pitch-pole right off the platform,” Oracle Team USA sailor Shannon Falcone predicted, describing an elaborate sailboat crash that sends the boat tiller over teakettle – exactly what wrecked the big AC72 boat in October.

“So everybody will have a replay of what happened when the big boat crashed,” Falcone said with a smirk.

Falcone, who is skippering the team’s effort to build the tiny flying boat, said he hoped the project would distract his teammates from the October crash that destroyed their only boat and crippled their training schedule for next year’s America’s Cup competition. A replacement boat won’t be ready until February.

“Sitting at lunch, I saw a (video) feed of the Flugtag, and I thought maybe we could do that,” said Falcone, 30. “I thought it would be a good way for us all to come together. … Everyone’s in for watching me go down in flames.”

So Falcone sketched out a plan on a napkin and enlisted the help of team Oracle’s crack aerodynamic experts, who spend their day jobs designing the most advanced wing sails in the sport.

“You get the designers loose on wing design and crikey – all the little kid comes out in everyone,” Falcone said. “I had to remind them that it was something that was going to get destroyed.”

As it stands now, the 1-to-5-scale boat uses two carbon fiber paddle boards, plenty of tape and some foam to create the rough outline of the two-hulled sailboat. A 12-foot sail will shoot into the air and, just before go time, it will be rotated 90 degrees to become a horizontal wing.

Falcone said he has found most of the pieces for his contraption lying around at the Oracle team base on Pier 80 – including a few bits of AC72 carbon fiber that cleanup crews found floating in the Pacific.

“I just go out and find what I can find” in the workshop, Falcone said, as he tore wires off a carbon pole he liberated from the top of a storage container.

Jimmy Spithill, the team skipper, said if he weren’t judging the Flugtag event on Saturday, he would strap his helmet on and ride out the 30-foot drop with Falcone.

“I’m jealous, I really want to fly,” Spithill said as he watched Falcone scamper around the workshop. “This guy is a multihull expert.”

Falcone joined late, so he can’t compete in the main event. But even as a sideshow to the sideshow, Spithill said he still had high hopes.

“I’ve got a feeling they’re going to get a good score – at least from one of the judges,” Spithill said.